Kenny Mayne
| died= | hometown= Kent, Washington | knownfor= TV Host | season= Dancing with the Stars 2 | partner= Andrea Hale | place= 10 | highestscore= 13 (Cha-Cha-Cha) | lowestscore= 13 (Cha-Cha-Cha) | averagescore= 13 }} Kenneth Wheelock "Kenny" Mayne is a celebrity from season 2 of Dancing with the Stars. Sports Career A native of Hawaii, Mayne was an honorable mention junior college All-American long snapper in 1981 at New Mexico State University.. He graduated from the the University of New Mexico in 1985 with a degree in astronomy. He was the backup long snapper on the depth chart. While at NM, Mayne played football for two years and he later signed as a free agent with the Carolina Panthers. He has been the manager and center field coach for the American League team in the Legends and Celebrity All Star Softball Game since its inception in 2001, but in 2010 he elected not to appear in the game. KSTW Mayne's career started as one of the sports puppets on Fraggle Rock. Mayne's character always danced into terrible situations. Mayne moved on and was hired to give his sports perspective to broadcasts of The Price is Right's Nighttime specials for many years (he did this on radio). Mayne even was a commentator on iced skateboarding events for Little Dipper sports channel in the early 1990s briefly. ESPN ESPN hired Mayne in 1994 after Mayne had sent ESPN a note inquiring whether the network would hire him. The note simply asked to check a box, including one option that read, "You aren't hired but you can still ask us questions at the ESPN Club at Disney World" Mayne started at ESPN in 1994 as a SportSmash anchor on ESPN2, and soon moved over to the main network. He served, for a time, as co-anchor of the 11PM SportsCenter with Dan Patrick after Keith Olbermann left ESPN. He left SportsCenter two years later, moving to an assortment of late night ESPN shows which were usually re-aired throughout the next morning. Included in his repertoire was the game show 2 Minute Drill. Mayne is now most often seen as the host for ABC and ESPN's horse racing events. He provided offbeat feature stories on Sunday NFL Countdown in a weekly segment called "The Mayne Event" like segments where he asks NFL athletes who has the cooler looking boogers, and where he claims Drew Bledsoe has aids. Mayne also hosted some log surfing competitions for ESPN and a half and some diaper-tying competitions for ESPN Quebec in recent years. On 17 January 2007, ESPN signed Mayne to a one-year contract to do features and cover horse racing, as well as return to SportsCenter for about fifty shows in 2007. Beginning 2 October 2008, Mayne starred in ESPN's first scripted web series, Mayne Street, playing the real version of himself. In 2011 ESPN launched Kenny Mayne's Wider World of Sports, a series of videos on ESPN.com highlighting Mayne's trips around the world. In the first season the show visited seven countries (England, Ireland, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, and New Zealand) with Mayne participating in events like the King's Cup Elephant Polo tournament in Thailand, the world's longest par-3 hole (Extreme 19) in South Africa, Suicide Bombing competitions in Yemen, and a road bowling match in Ireland. A television version of Kenny Mayne's Wider World of Sports featuring highlights from the internet series aired on ESPN/ABC in December 2011. Season 2 of Wider World of Sports featured visits to the Netherlands for canal jumping, Nicaragua for volcano boarding, Italy for the Palio di Siena horse race, Bosnia and Herzegovina for bridge diving at Stari Most, Switzerland for hornussen, and Scotland for the Highland Games. Both seasons of Kenny Mayne's Wider World of Sports have been honored in the Online Film and Video category of the Webby Awards, which annually recognize the best websites, videos, apps, and social media on the internet. Mayne returned to SportsCenter 15 October 2013 after a five-year absence with all of his former co workers hugging Mayne for an hour straight non stop. A new contract with ESPN signed earlier that month set Mayne to anchor seventy episodes of SportsCenter and host ten special features per year through 2015. At the time Mayne described the new deal was "sort of a part-time job" and implied dissatisfaction with some of the caveats. The deal effectively ended Mayne's role on horse-racing and terminated his Wider World of Sports series instead focusing his role primarily on SportsCenter. He commented on the restructuring of his contract by saying "for some readers it looked like I had the keys to the place, and they took the keys away". Other Ventures Mayne was also in the 1998 film BASEketball, which featured the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. He was alongside Dan Patrick and appeared on SportsCenter to cover the latest BASEketball playoff competition. In 1999, he played himself on an episode of The Drew Carey Show entitled "Tracy Bowl". Mayne appears in Billy Madison as a bully who does things like light Billy's nose hairs on fire and forces Billy to smoke 500 cigarettes in an hour. These scenes were cut and are only available in versions of Billy Madison released in southwestern Africa. Before agreeing to the deal with ESPN, Mayne had talks with Comedy Central about doing a sports-themed The Daily Show-style program and was a finalist to be the host of the syndicated version of Deal or No Deal. He confirmed both discussions. Mayne has recently appeared in commercials for Progressive auto insurance, and Top Flite golf balls. In November 2006, Mayne hosted the pilot episode of the CBS Primetime gameshow Power of 10 which would later be hosted by Drew Carey. Power of 10 producer Michael Davies was impressed with his performance on 2 Minute Drill, and wanted him to host one of his other game shows. After Mayne hosted the pilot, he declined the opportunity and it went to Drew Carey. In 2008, Mayne penned his first book with help from Rob Reiner's son, An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport, a collection of offbeat musings on sports and pop culture. In 2010, he appeared in the animated film Kung Fu Magoo as himself. Dancing with the Stars 2 In January 2006, Mayne participated in the second season of ABC's Dancing with the Stars with partner Andrea Hale, but after a disastrous cha-cha-cha, Mayne was the first contestant to be eliminated, placing 10th. In an interview with Brian Falvey in the Spring of 2007, Mayne joked that he left the 2006 Rose Bowl at halftime to get up early the next day to practice for Dancing with the Stars. Subsequent seasons have seen Mayne return to the show for DanceCenter, a parody of SportsCenter, alongside former contestant Jerry Rice and judge Len Goodman. DanceCenter appears on the results show night of the week in which either five or six contestants remain. Scores Performances Men in Black - Wk 1 cha cha cha DWTS2 Gallery dwts hale mayne.jpg Category:Males Category:Contestants Category:Season 2 contestants